The Blunder From Down Under
December 20th 2008 04:24
Early on, the signs weren’t good for Baz Luhrmann’s epic production, Australia. Talk of multiple writers, casting delays and production problems bounced around the industry and, later, when the movie moved in to post-production, word drifted out of the Cutting Edge offices in Brisbane of the one million plus feet of footage being wrestled into a workable final cut.
Of course, troubled productions don’t always turn into botched films, with perhaps The Bourne Identity being the most cogent modern example of a chaotic creative process producing an efficient, well-balanced piece of celluloid.
Australia fails to pull off such a trick, proving to be a sprawling epic that rambles rather than enraptures. While already much has been made of the appropriateness of Luhrmann’s distinctive visual style and the over-the-top nature of the performances, the problems with Australia stem from much more elementary problems, most worryingly a poor script.
Australia features four different writers and it’s a movie that has the feel of having being rewritten almost on the fly. Beginning around the turn of the 1940s, the story initially concerns the efforts of Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman), Drover (Hugh Jackman) and a ragtag bunch of herders to deliver 1500 head of cattle to a waiting warship in Darwin. It’s a race against time, the elements and the bad guys employed by Ashley’s rival, the cattle baron King Carney (Bryan Brown). A classic set up, it’s built upon straightforward storytelling and echoes keenly the great westerns of the past.
Unfortunately, this part of the film only lasts until about halfway through, before the story of the drove is sacrificed and the momentum of the movie is brought to a shuddering halt. The story arc fails and the audience suddenly lose interest. Subplots on steroids seem to envelop the movie as it hurtles off into the stratosphere trying to address The Stolen Generation issues and the Japanese bombing of Darwin in World War II.
While many a compelling story could be (and has been already) told using The Stolen Generation as a backdrop, there is little use in trying to graft such a tale on top of that of a cattle drove. You’re left with the impression that it was perhaps added on a cultural relevance stipulation by the government to warrant the generous tax breaks that the production eventually netted. Likewise, the bombing of Darwin adds little to the dramatic momentum of the film and seems very much an afterthought.
One thing the film does do well is underline how much underused Aboriginal acting talent there is floating about in Australian cinema. David Gulpilil needs little introduction, but others, such as Lillian Crombie and the young Brandon Walters are revelations, whilst quietly stealing just about every scene that he appears in is the brilliant David Ngoombujarra. Ngoombujarra has an intimidating amount of charisma that is in full effect even when working with such a short amount of screen time.
Australia certainly isn’t unwatchable, but as a piece of story telling it is a failure, foolishly opening up a battle on multiple fronts. From the moment he allowed that to happen, Luhrmann was always going to be pushing a clumsy production uphill. With all the hype and expectation, the movie was perhaps bound to disappoint, it’s just a pity it made itself so easy to dislike.
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